Adolfo Arranz

This week’s Portfolio comes from Spain, and it’s from one of the most impressive and respected infographic designers in the world – at least for us here at Visual Loop. Adolfo Arranz was born in 1969 in the Spanish town of Valladolid, where he studied graphic design and illustration at the local School of Arts.

After working as a freelancer for a couple of years, in 1994 he started at the regional issue of El Mundo, where he made his first contact with infographic design. “I had never made an infographic before, so I really learned it inside El Mundo newspaper, that was my school, and for that I’ll always be grateful to all my workmates”, said Adolfo.

“I worked for El Mundo Valladolid, El Mundo Castilla y León and El Mundo Galicia. In 1998, I joined El Mundo Baleares edition at Mallorca, always working with a lot of charts, a lot of breaking news. Those were very busy times, but it was great. And after 4 years, I changed to work as freelancer for almost all editions of El Mundo. At this point, I had more time to developed works and concentrate in my illustration-infographic style.”

Last year, another huge change. “I’m now a senior infographic designer and illustrator at Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, and been living in this awesome city since 2011. My focus here are big infographics jobs, back pages with themes that don’t usually need additional information”.

Even with the change, Adolfo still has time to keep freelancing. And what about the inspiration? Well, drawing it’s a passion, like he explains: “I like to sketch a lot, I’m always doing life sketches in the street or indoors, as a form to continuously learn to look and understand the “things around me”. This also helps me to bring the quick drawing in almost all of my infographics works. I usually use Corel Painter and a Wacom tablet for the illustrations and a bit of Adobe Illustrator. And of course, I love to do others things, such as design, posters, illustrations for books, among others”

Adolfo selected some of his amazing work to share with us:

Volcanoes | El Mundo

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | El Mundo)

Iceberg | El Mundo

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | El Mundo)

Extinction of the Dinosaurs | El Mundo

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | El Mundo)

Yau Ma Tei Theatre | South China Morning Post

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | South China Morning Post)

Sinking the unsinkable | South China Morning Post

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | South China Morning Post)

Liang Sicheng residence | South China Morning Post

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | South China Morning Post)

End of the airship era | South China Morning Post

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | South China Morning Post)

Pedal power | South China Morning Post

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | South China Morning Post)

A question of taste | South China Morning Post

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | South China Morning Post)

Ancient Olympics | South China Morning Post

(infographic: Adolfo Arranz | South China Morning Post)

You should visit Adolfo’s website for more of his work and career, and we’ll be back next week with another Portfolio!

Written by Tiago Veloso

Tiago Veloso is the founder and editor of Visualoop and Visualoop Brasil . He is Portuguese, currently based in Bonito, Brazil.